Halloween Pictures...

Maddie as part of the Pumpkin Patch

Maggie and Daddy

Geneva the Mermaid

And ...Live From Dallas, It's Saturday Night Live! Starring Tina Fey as Sarah Palin.

The Princess' 3rd Birthday, ongoing...

September 7th was Geneva's 3rd Birthday. We celebrated by holding a birthday party at Pump It Up, Jr., which is a party facility that houses lots of inflatables like slides and bounce house like apparatuses. When Geneva arrived at the facility, I told her that it was her Birthday Party and asked her what she thought. She responded with "I love it!"

Geneva got soooo many wonderful gifts and had so much fun. Thanks to everyone that made her day special. It took us 3 days to open all the gifts and then some. Geneva still keeps getting gifts and may start thinking her Birthday is a week-long celebration, afterall, she still keeps singing the "Happy Birthday" song to herself. :)

Update on the twins: they have been walking for almost a month now. They love their security blankets. The twins have upgraded to their convertible car seats, which took like almost 1 day to setup - remove the old car seats, swap out Geneva's car seats (to give to the twins), and put all the car seats in. Both vehicles had all 3 car seats swapped/replaced. There just isn't enough LATCH connectors to go around for the Princess and Twincesses.

The Case of Mistaken Identity

It's difficult for parents of single born children to understand the frustrations a parent of identical twin goes through - to be constantly mixing your children up, to have everyone ask you constantly who is who (even when looking at their pictures), and the daycare teachers to feel frustrated because they can't keep it straight. So here is our story (in a 1000 words or less)...

When Maddie and Maggie were born, we were told by our OBGYN and our perinatologist both said we were going to have fraternal, or dizygotic, twins. They said that because the babies had separate sacs and separate placentas. I was in my late 30s and I have had a history of hyper ovulation, so it seemed logical. Depending on which statistics you read, there is about a 10% of the separate sacs/placentas twins being identical (or monozygotic). But there is not consensus on this. Other experts in the field are now saying it's has high as 30%.

So, when the babies were born. We thought they were fraternal. They did look a little different. When twins checked out of the NICU, we kept their bracelets on. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would have so much difficulty determining who was who, after all we are their parents. I've grown up with twins and learned to figure it out. Eventually, our pediatrician pointed out to us that Maddie has a crooked toe on the right foot - Yeah! A mark to tell them apart. As you read in our previous post, we finally had them DNA tested.

The key to keeping it all straight has been developing systems and procedures:

1. Daycare and their daily report cards - The teachers go nuts trying to figure out who is who, so we dress Maddie in pink or purple and Maggie in blue or green, then write it down on their daily reports at daycare. We use Maddie's crooked toe as a reminder when dressing them.
2. Bloodtests, shots, and doctor checkups - got to get this straight for the record! Always check Maddie's toe (never rely on their clothes color because we have been known to mess that up sometimes).
3. Drinking from their own bottles - we have a system, red bottles for Maddie and blue bottles for Maggie (with names on the bottles).
4. Medicines - give both of them medicines at the same time; provided they both are on the same medications, which doesn't always happen.
5. Diaper changes - Who was changed when? Is Maddie's Diaper needing to be changed or is it Maggie's turn? So we just decided to change both diapers at the same time no matter what, even though we hate to waste diapers.
6. Asperators/Nose Sprays - We have color coded asperators w/ names and we mark the nose spray bottles w/ their names.
7. Pictures - How do you know which one is Maddie and which is Maggie? We try to dress them different but in some cases, we do like to have photos with them dressed the same. In that case, we try to place Maddie on the right and Maggie on the left.

yada yada....Of course someday, the twins will want to dress themselves and exert their independence. Or they will purposely switch their identities to fool their parents and their teachers. Then we will be in trouble. ;-)

Quotes from the Princess...

Ok, I've been harassed into doing this blog. So, here it is Cindy!

My favorite quotes from the Princess (Geneva, of course ;-) ):

1. "Uh Oh!" (I think every baby starts with this one, but it's so cute the first 100 times you hear it, until you realize "Hey, wait a minute, they are playing the pickup game!").
2. "Da Do!" (that is infant speak for "Thank you!")
3. "Hickup Truck" (referring to a pickup truck).
4. "Ohhh Mannnn!" (with the voice of Swiper from Dora).
5. "Bang bang" (Geneva's word for rubber band, band aid, or hair band).
6. "She's jjjusttt a Baby!" (with the accent of Forrest Gump).
7. "Emberly goes home by choo choo train?" (referring to her teacher who takes the Dart Rail home).
8. "My babies!" (Somehow, Geneva thinks that her twin classmates are going to steal her twin sisters out of the stroller).
9. "It rolled away!" (referring to anything that has disappeared).
10. "There's Maggie, oh there's another Maggie" (referring to the 1st twin sister and then followed by the 2nd twin sister as they appeared).
11. "Excuse me, I farted!"
12. "It's the BBBIIIGGG ONE! (in a deep raspy voice)" (referring to her big poo poo).

And my favorite:
13. Referring to our wedding photo: "There's Princess Mommy!"

Birthdays, Baby Dedications, and the DNA Results

Hi all,

Today is the twins' Birthday! They were born on Mother's Day 2007. So, we thought it was fitting that they be dedicated at our church on Mother's Day (last Sunday). We also had a little Birthday Party on Saturday. God has been so gracious to us!!!!

The DNA test results are in...drum roll... they are identical!!!!

The DNA test results showed that the twins matched exactly on all 15 genetic markers and based on the statistical odds of those genetic markers, the testing accuracy was estimated to be 99.99999% accurate. The odds of the twins being identical (monozygotic) based on their genetic markers were 10 million to 1.

The odds of having identical twins are quite low - 0.3-0.4 %. Odds of having twins, identical or fraternal, is around 3.1%. So, we feel even more blessed. Before and after the twins were born, the doctors kept telling us that most likely our twins were fraternal (cause of the separate sacs, separate placentas), so we had believed it for a while. But when the twins started looking more and more alike, we began to believe that they must be identical.

A lot of people don't know that when we were pregnant at 6 wks, our obgyn told us that Baby A ("Maddie") had a really slow heart rate and estimated about a 50% chance that she would survive. Isn't amazing how everything worked out?!?!

Dore Survey: Do you think Maddie and Maggie are identical or not?

Hi all,

We are constantly asked the question of whether or not our twins are identical. We never know how to respond. They were born is separate sacs w/ separate embilical cords - all that means is that they may have a 10-30% chance of being identical (monozygotic) or a 70-90% chance of being fraternal (dizygotic), precentages vary depending on which expert you listen to. So, we decided to have their DNA tested. We've sent the DNA materials off last Friday (5/2) to a lab, and should know in 1 week. In the meantime, we thought it would be fun to take a survey. We want to hear from everyone to find out what you think? If you vote, please vote just once per person (and only 10 yrs or older voters please - to make the vote realistic). I don't have a way to tell who voted what in the end, so don't worry about being hunted down for the wrong answer - it's only for fun. I will certainly share the results with everyone. There are pics on the website.

Website to vote: http://tamdore.blogspot.com/ (here)
Deadline: 05/09/08 11:59pm central time